In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 156: Woodstock '94, Weirdest Atari Games Ever, the Original Reality TV Show, End of the DuMont Network(8-7-2024)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 156

Share episode

Send us a text

A sequel to a beloved music festival. The OG of reality TV shows. Some of the weirdest video games Atari could create.
Episode 156 of the podcast will combine the warm and fuzzy with the confusing as we travel through the halls of nostalgia.
It kicks off with a trip back 30 years. The original Woodstock was a seminal moment of the 20th century. The artists who played it became legends and those in attendance will never forget it. Naturally, a sequel was in order, and that came in 1994. How did this spiritual successor to the original do?
Reality television like it or not has been a staple of network programming for over 30 years. Some shows have become iconic while many others were quickly thrown in the trash. There had to be an original though. This week we go way Back In the Day and look at that OG of reality TV, Candid Camera.
In a brand new Top 5 we will delve into the weird as we look at some of the weirdest video games Atari ever created. Not saying these games are necessarily bad, just that the premise behind them makes you wonder what substances the creators might have been on.
A new This Week In History and Time Capsule will showcase the downfall of one of the first television networks, the DuMont Network.
For more great content become a subscriber on Patreon!

Helpful Links from this Episode

Listen to Episode 155 here 

Support the show

Speaker 00:

Hello, world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 156. August is here. We're kicking off the month with a lot of amazing nostalgia because nostalgia is totally awesome. We're going to kick it off with a look back 30 years at Woodstock 94 and the legacy of that amazing concert. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at the original reality show, Candid Camera. There's going to be a brand new top five that are the top five weirdest Atari video games ever made, and there were definitely some weird ones. And there will be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule centered around the end of the Dumont Television Network. All of that is coming up right now on episode 156 of the In My Footsteps Welcome into the show. Welcome to the first show of August, the last full month of summer. Sorry to say that. What are we going to talk about this week? Obviously, I've got loads of nostalgia, so that's going to be a number one. Wherever you are listening from right now, whether you're Cape Cod, New England, somewhere else across America or over in Europe or any of the other countries in the world. I hope that you're enjoying the podcast. If the weather's nice, I hope you're enjoying the weather. And I wanted to thank you for tuning in. 156 episodes. I must really love doing this. Just every week, it never stops, which is a lot of fun. I love coming up with these topics, nostalgia that I hope you'll enjoy. As always, I wanted to start off with a shout out to my Patreon subscribers, Laurie, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Marguerite, Thank you all so much for being subscribers. $5 a month gets you access to bonus episodes of the podcast where I go over my old original initial impressions blog. The newest episode went up August 1st. We are smack dab in the middle of a week-long trip I took up to Maine in 2010 and the random shenanigans that happened there. As I say every week on the podcast, when I talk about Patreon, I keep saying I'm trying to find new things, more things that I can do to entice more people to become paying subscribers. I keep bringing up the bonus video podcast that would kind of be like the regular bonus podcast where I go over the initial impressions blog, except the video one would be the current initial impressions 2.0. I have finally broken down and bought myself a new camcorder. It's like a travel vlog camcorder that can also double as a webcam. So we may be seeing these bonus video podcasts sooner than later now that I've actually bought the camcorder. And there's of course a free tier on Patreon. I'm trying to put more stuff on there for the free tier as well so you don't have to become a paying member. Just become a member in general. I also wanted to give my thanks to the people at the Payomet Performing Arts Center in Truro. Thank you for having me yesterday. So when the podcast goes live, yesterday, August 6th, was my talk under the tent about the history of music on Cape Cod, sounds of the Cape. Thank you to everyone who came out to check it out. It was a lot of fun to present, a lot of fun to put together. Hopefully I'll get to do this presentation again. I put a lot of effort into it, so to only do it once would kind of be a shame. I've got a little bit of a break in between events now for books. My next event is not until October 23rd at the Eldridge Library in Chatham. I'll be speaking about my Searching for the Lady of the Dunes book. Naturally, I'll give you more information as we get closer to it. But without further ado, let's get into the meat of the podcast. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, at least on Cape Cod on the day I'm recording this. So let's latch on to some warm nostalgia or feel old or both. As we look back now, 30 years at the sequel to the original Woodstock concert, Woodstock 94 coming up right now. In the annals of music history, there are very few events that hold a candle to the iconic Woodstock, the original Woodstock, that was held in August 1969. That show, that event, it was a cultural milestone. It encapsulated that spirit of the generation, peace, love, music, amid the tumultuous era with the Vietnam War and civil rights. It was called the Woodstock Music and Art Fair of 1969. That was the full name. And it took place on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York. That was the symbol of the 1960s counterculture movement. It was promoted as an Aquarian Exposition, Three Days of Peace and Music. And the original Woodstock Festival drew over 400,000 people together. On the backs of legendary artists like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, Santana. Despite the logistical challenges of hundreds of thousands of people on a farm and adverse weather conditions, Woodstock 1969 is remembered for the communal spirit and the enduring impact on music and culture as a whole. Fast forward 25 years to 1994 and it was time for a sequel. 1994 was to be my introduction year into concerts as I had a plan to go to the Lollapalooza 94 concert that was going to be headlined by Nirvana. That was my big thing. My first concert would be Nirvana. The closest stop on the Lollapalooza tour to me would have been the Quonset State Airport in North Kingstown, Rhode Island. That was August 3rd, 1994. That was not to be, and Lollapalooza wasn't really showcased much on television. MTV would show highlights, so I had to kind of live through what would be the sequel to Woodstock, Woodstock 94. And this sequel, it was very much deeply connected to the original Woodstock. Promoters John Schur and Michael Lang, who were involved in the original Woodstock, decided to organize a new festival. This sequel, Woodstock 94, was planned with the intention of honoring the original while also engaging a new generation of music lovers. It was scheduled for August 12th through the 14th, 1994, with it being held in the town of Saugerties, New York, which was just a few miles from the original Woodstock site. In an interesting twist, at least for me... I've told you all several times, longtime podcast listeners, about my road trip that I took around the eastern U.S. about five years ago, November 2019. And that first day when I drove from Cape Cod straight out through western Massachusetts into upstate New York, little did I know, because it wasn't on my itinerary, that I went through Bethel, New York, where the original Woodstock was, to And I stopped in Saugerties, New York, because there was a cool lighthouse I wanted to get a photo of. So if I had planned better or known better, I could have visited both Woodstock original and 94 sites where they were held, but I passed right by. Woodstock 94 featured a diverse lineup that spanned multiple genres. When I look at the list of artists that played those shows, it's like a who's who, basically for anyone that liked music in the mid-1990s. I'm not going to list everybody that played at the show, but I'll give you a pretty comprehensive list here. So you got Blues Traveler, Sheryl Crow, Collective Soul, Live, Joe Cocker, Blind Melon, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, Aerosmith, Salt-N-Pepa. Allman Brothers, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Green Day, Santana, and so many more. It's important to list all of these artists for you for you to get the idea of the scope of this concert and how it appealed to so many people across so many generations. Those of you that have seen at least parts of Woodstock 94 or maybe watched documentaries about it, You may remember this concert mostly for Green Day's set. This was the one where Green Day basically had a mud fight between them and the audience. It was seen as kind of symbolic of the festival's free-spirited nature. It was more of that same feeling that the original Woodstock had. And even though the music was different, I mean, Nine Inch Nails and Metallica is far different from the folkier sound of some of the bands that played at the original. Some of these acts cemented their legacy at this show. The promoters, John Cher and Michael Lang, made sure to connect this to the original Woodstock with Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Santana and others from that original lineup coming aboard to play here. It's interesting to think about Santana because at this point in 94, they were kind of a legacy rock band. And five years later, the album Supernatural would come out and make them bigger than they probably had ever been. Tickets to the three-day festival were $135 or about $286 when adjusted for inflation to 2024. So when you think about that, three days of music for $286? Just pause this podcast and go to Ticketmaster, Live Nation, and see how much a concert ticket costs. I'm betting that many of them are more than $286 and you don't get three days worth of entertainment unless you're a stalker and hang out around behind the tour buses of some of the bands. Despite there being tickets sold... That didn't mean that everybody that was there to watch the shows had bought tickets. Estimates have the attendance for the three-day Woodstock 94 at somewhere around 550,000 people. For comparison, as of 2022, the population of Saugerties, New York was just under 3,900 people. But like I said, 550,000 people were at the show. about 164,000 tickets were sold. That means basically more than two-thirds of the people at Woodstock 94 went for free, which, I mean, that's a great deal. I'd have gone at 16 for free, hitchhiked my way out to Saugerties, New York. This played into some of the challenges of Woodstock 94, because if you're planning on a certain number of people and you get three times what you think... or at least three times who paid for tickets, that could be trouble. The biggest trouble, well, besides the gigantic crowd, was the rain. It turned the festival grounds into this muddy quagmire that was reminiscent of the original Woodstock. But that only added to the charm and the legacy of this show. Like I said, Green Day had a mud fight with the crowd. There were other bands that kind of incorporated the mud into their act, like Nine Inch Nails. The festival organizers, though, rolled with the punches when it came to the crowds. They provided better infrastructure, improved food and water supplies, medical facilities, and security measures. So people were safer being there, but they still, it didn't lose that spirit of improvisation and communal living that defined the original Woodstock. it really did succeed in bridging that gap between the hippie generation of the 1960s and the grunge alternative Gen X. Because you know people went to Woodstock 94 to see specific acts and likely became fans of other bands they wouldn't have normally listened to. You know there were people that went to listen to Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, Green Day, that suddenly became fans of Crosby, Stills, and Nash. In the broader context of music history, Woodstock 94 reinforced that idea that festivals could be both large-scale but also meaningful. This influenced events that would come in the future like Bonnaroo and Coachella. It would also influence a more infamous sequel, Woodstock 99. Woodstock 99 was in Rome, New York at the end of July 1999, another three-day festival. This one is marred. It's different. It has a different feeling. And I'm not saying it's because they added different bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit. That's not it. It was the overcrowding, lack of facilities, price gouging, incidents of violence and sexual assault, which that wouldn't have been a thing at the original Woodstock or even 94. And then there was the well-meaning tribute to the Columbine High School shooting victims, where some were given candles for kind of a vigil, and some of them used those candles to start fires. All told, it took about four weeks for people to clean up the grounds of Woodstock 99 due to all the damage that people caused there. When I was putting together podcast itineraries going forward... I had a choice to make between Woodstock 94 and 99. I went with Woodstock 94 because it's way more fondly remembered. If I bring up Woodstock 99 to people who were around then, who maybe would have gone to the show, you have a far different picture in your head of Woodstock 99. It lives in infamy. But Woodstock 94 takes its place right along the original Woodstock, a spiritual successor, that same feeling, that same vibe. It was both a celebration of the past and a nod to the future and became a new significant chapter in the ongoing story of rock and roll music. It's been 25 years since there was a Woodstock concert. I haven't heard anything about them maybe bringing it back. Either way, you can still relive Woodstock 94. You can find videos on YouTube. It's really easy to find full sets from the bands that played then. And there's the Woodstock 94 album, which I'm sure if you got on vinyl, it would be a collector's item now. Do you remember Woodstock 94? Were you there? Let me know if you do want me to do a full segment about Woodstock 99. I mean, I will, but it's way more sad than Woodstock 94. This week in history, we are going back 68 years ago to August 6th, 1956, and the final broadcast of the Dumont Television Network. Back in episode 145, I did a top five segment on defunct television channels, and one of them was the Dumont Network. It was one of the first television networks in the United States, and it played a pivotal role in the early days of American broadcasting. The station had its roots way back in 1938 through Dr. Alan B. Dumont, who was an inventor and engineer and a key figure in the development of the cathode ray tube, which was essential for the production of television sets. Dumont Laboratories ventured into the broadcasting arena in 1942, obtaining experimental television station licenses for W2XWV in New York City, which later became WABD, named for Alan B. Dumont. The Dumont Network, proper as you would know it, started in 1946. The Dumont Television Network was the second television network in the United States following NBC. Dumont had stations in New York City and Washington, D.C., and they served as the foundation for the network's growth. During its early years, the Dumont network expanded rapidly. They added affiliates in major cities all across the United States. And by 1947, Dumont was broadcasting a variety of programs, news, sports, dramas, comedies. Some of their notable early shows included The Original Amateur Hour, Cavalcade of Stars, and Captain Video and his Video Rangers. The peak for the Dumont Network was likely 1951. That was when they achieved a near national reach with affiliates in cities like Chicago, LA, Pittsburgh. They were also innovative in their programming, including several firsts, like the first network daytime soap opera, Far Away Hill, and the first science fiction series that Captain Video and his video rangers. Despite their early successes, the Dumont Network began to face significant financial challenges. The issue was that their competitors, NBC, CBS... They had the financial backing of a parent company with strong presence in radio broadcasting. Dumont didn't have a radio sister station, I guess you'd say. Dumont also struggled to secure advertising revenue, and that was crucial for sustaining its operations. It all started crumbling down in 1954 when Dumont faced another significant challenge, getting embroiled in a legal dispute with Paramount Pictures. Paramount owned a minority stake in Dumont and they operated two television stations, KTLA in Los Angeles and WBKB in Chicago. The problem came when Paramount began to prioritize its own interests like their movie studio over those of Dumont. So if you've got two huge affiliates that don't really take the time or interest in their television stations, it's going to be a problem. It was a slippery slope. By 1955, Dumont was forced to cut back on its programming, reduce its operational hours. They began to lose affiliates to the more financially stable competitors. This all added up where they struggled to maintain a consistent schedule of high quality programming. If your television show has limited hours and when it's on the air, the programming isn't that great, you're not going to have a big audience. It all came to a head on August 6th, 1956 with the final broadcast of the Dumont Television Network. The final program was Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena. And after that program went off the air, so did Dumont. Although a few more local programs played on WABD in New York City. August 6th, 1956 marked the end of the Dumont Network, which is amazing to think of when it was the second network ever and was a national channel. What's really sad about Dumont is that due to the financial troubles, a lot of what they did was record new programs over old programs. So like what you would do with VHS tapes in the 80s and 90s, tape over stuff with what you wanted to watch. So there's very little in the way of Dumont Network shows for you to find. In some ways, it's like they vanished off the face of the earth. And that final broadcast of the Dumont Television Network, One of the original TV stations in the country occurred 68 years ago this week in history. Oh, and it's time for a brand new time capsule. We're going to stick to that same day. August 6th, 1956, the Dumont Network has ended. What was going on in the world of pop culture on that day? The number one song was My Prayer by The Platters. This song has a long history. It was originally recorded in 1926 and then again in 1939 by Glenn Miller's band. The Platters version was the only one to go to number one, although two other versions of it cracked the top five. This was a single off of The Platters' self-titled album. The Platters had a ton of big hit songs in the 50s and early 60s. including The Great Pretender, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Only You, and The Magic Touch. The number one movie was High Society, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing 50 cents. This is a musical romantic comedy starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra. And it's about a woman whose ex-husband is trying to convince her that she still loves him when she's on the eve of her wedding to another man. It's 83% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and made just over $8 million at the box office on a budget of just under $3 million. So it was a modest hit back then. The number one TV show was The $64,000 Question. This game show was on CBS in primetime from 1955 to 1958. The basis of the show was the contestant answering questions of increasing difficulty for increasing prizes. Hal March was the host of the show. $64,000 question is probably most well-remembered for being embroiled in the quiz show controversy of the late 1950s, where it was rumored that some contestants got the answers to questions in advance. If you want me to do a deeper dive into that quiz show controversy, let me know, because it is nostalgia, but it's way back nostalgia. It's back when my parents were babies. And if you were around back then, August 6th, 1956, you wanted to watch the final day of the Dumont Network, and you just bought yourself a brand new TV, you might need an antenna on your roof. Well, you're in luck. The Montgomery Ward catalog will sell you an airline TV antenna two-section, VHF and UHF, for $19.95, or about $230 when adjusted for inflation. Do people still have antennas on their roof? I still see satellite dishes every now and then. And I remember having antennas when I was very little. But I don't know if that's still a thing, if that's necessary. Is that a sign that you're behind the times if I drive by your house and you've got a huge TV antenna on top of your roof? And also, you better make sure you ordered your antenna from the Montgomery Ward catalog weeks in advance because it's not just going to be like Amazon with overnight shipping. But that'll do it for a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule. Coming up now, though, oh boy, many reasons why the Atari is no longer around. Let's look at the weirdest Atari games ever made, and there definitely are some coming up right now. I love nostalgia. Obviously, this podcast has evolved into being basically all about nostalgia. Sometimes you should leave the memories alone when it comes to nostalgia. Not all of it is great, although this will be some funny stuff. As much as I love the classic video games, and I mean the good ones from Atari, Nintendo, Sega Genesis, it's hard to deny that video games today, the quality is just light years ahead of what I grew up with as a kid. I don't really play video games anymore, so I'm sure there are some really terrible ones that have been released in the last few years. But here, don't knock the classics. So this week's top five, we're going to look at the weirdest Atari games ever made. At first, I was going to do a segment that was just weirdest video games ever. And then when I looked at Atari and saw so many, I said, I got to divide this up into different consoles. So at some point in the future, we'll do weirdest Nintendo games, weirdest Sega games. These games here, they're all from the Atari 2600, maybe some from the 5200. And these are really weird. And some are just hilarious that these got made. But it shows when video games were in their infancy, what people could get away with. As with most of these top five lists, they are in no particular order. And we've got some honorable mentions. And I'll say it again, these are all real games. So honorable mentions for weirdest Atari games ever made include Kool-Aid Man, which was about the mascot Kool-Aid Man trying to keep the Thirsties from stealing water from his swimming pool. There was Red Sea Crossing. This was a religious Christian side-scrolling game where Moses parts the Red Sea and then he has to lead people through it with all these obstacles to get around. There was Pepsi Invaders, which was a takeoff on the Space Invaders game. This was a non-commissioned game given by the Coca-Cola company to their employees, so it's a bit of a cheat, but it's still a real game. There was... tax avoiders, where the object is to help John Q collect income over a year and not pay taxes. And the final honorable mention was Revenge of the Beefsteak Tomatoes, which is about a tomato sprayer that has to fight off tomatoes that have come to life to kill people. Essentially, Atari couldn't get the licensing to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, the movie, so they made this game. So those are the honorable mentions. Did you play any of those or hear of any of those? We're going to dial the weirdness up to 11 as we go into the actual top five. It can't get any weirder. Well, it can, but then number one, Journey Escape. It sounds like a fighter game. You're out in space with spaceships trying to escape aliens. No, the journey is not an actual journey. It's the band journey. This game was released in 1982 and it stars the band Journey and it's based around their album Escape, thus the name Journey Escape. The game starts off promising because it's got a clip of Journey's biggest hit ever, Don't Stop Believin', but you don't play as the band. You play basically as a roadie that has to lead them past lovesick groupies, photographers and promoters that are trying to steal their money. It's a scrolling game, but it goes top to bottom, and it just keeps going, but you can control the speed of the scroll. You can find gameplay of this on YouTube, and you can find cartridges for sale on eBay, if you happen to have an Atari 2600 still. Journey is hardly the only musical act to have a video game based around it. There was Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. Aerosmith, Spice Girls, Wu-Tang Clan, they all had games based on them as well. But I think Journey was the first and definitely not the best. Number two is Sneak and Peek. Now, if this sounds like something that might be familiar to you, it's because it's a hide and seek video game. This is either one player against the computer or two players. And if it's two players, one of you has to close your eyes like in hide and seek while this person plays the game and finds a place to hide in this house. Think about other popular games that we played as kids and then imagine them being made into video games you could play. Things like Tag or Foursquare or Marbles and Jacks. Those being made into video games and then people actually buying them instead of just going outside and doing it. It reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Bart goes to a traveling carnival with the family and he plays the virtual reality yard work simulator game, but he won't do yard work at home. If you're in the drinking game where I mention Simpsons or The Office quotes, then you might as well drink now. Sneak and Peek was another game released in 1982 for the Atari 2600. And reading some of the reviews, the pros say there's a lot of good places to hide. It's basically three rooms in a house and you hide and it's the blocky 8-bit graphic characters. And if you go to my old friends at retrogames.cz, which I'll link to in the podcast, you can play Sneak and Peek. Ooh, exciting. Number three is Bachelor Party. This game is also from 1982 for the Atari 2600. This game is listed as a pornographic video game. Yes, Atari made adult video games. And this is not a one-time thing with Bachelor Party. This is a genre on Atari. They have other adult games, including Beat Em and Eat Em, Burning Desire, and best of all, Philly Flasher slash Cat House Blues. The gameplay of this, it's basically a simplified version of the game Breakout. The ball is made to look like a nude man, and the bricks you're supposed to hit are made to look like nude women. And the man bounces back and forth horizontally rather than vertically. The main premise of this game is that an unnamed bachelor is having his final fling in a room full of nude women, and the man is being propelled into the nude women repeatedly, with the player's paddle being a container of Spanish fly. It's unbelievable. You can find gameplay of this on YouTube. I don't know if you want to see this. Because it even says when entering the fray, the bachelor's exaggerated and pixelated penis is seen to be erect. Jesus. I mean, I don't know what else to say about this game. Except that you can go play it on retrogames.cz as well. Yeesh. Number four is Mangia. That's Italian for eat. This game is from 1983 and it's actually one of the rarest Atari video games there is. And also one of the weirdest. So you're this little boy sitting at a table and the point of the game is that his mother is feeding him pasta. And he has to eat all this pasta and his mother keeps bringing it to basically make his stomach explode. So your mother's trying to kill you with pasta. And the way you win is you've got to feed the pasta to the pets that are around you without your mother seeing it. I mean, who came up with that idea? We need a game about a mother trying to kill her child with food. It honestly sounds like a video game I would have tried to create when I was about 10 years old. If you get caught giving pasta to the pets, your mother brings three times as much the next time, and your stomach will explode into a mass of blue pixels. Oh my god. We'll end with something very different, but no less weird. With number five, I want my mommy. No, this is not another adult game, some fetish. It was a game intended for children under the age of nine. And you play Teddy, a teddy bear. And you're climbing up. It's a little bit like the old Donkey Kong games. In level one, you've got to get an apple. And then level two, you've got to get to your mother. And if you pass both of those levels, you return to level one, but it's harder. The best way to sum this game up is a review in the August-September 1983 issue of Video Games Player Magazine, where they called the game Great for Little Kids, Bad for Everyone Else. The cover art of the game is this very sad-looking teddy bear. So I guess that's more of harmless weird. That'll wrap up the top five. Had you heard of any of these games or are you going to go play them on retrogames.cz? If any of you play Bachelor Party, good luck with that. Well, we'll segue from I can't believe those games were real to the dawn of reality television as we look at the television show Candid Camera right now. There's a full generation of people that have grown up with reality television being a dominating force in entertainment. All those Bachelor, Bachelorette shows, Big Brother, Survivor, these Real Housewives shows. Going back 30 years to real world on MTV. Reality TV, though, as we know it, it had to start somewhere. There had to be kind of that OG reality TV show. And that's what we're going to look at here as we go back in the day and look at Candid Camera. Even if you've never heard of Candid Camera or never seen it, you get the concept of it. Hidden camera shows. That stuff, it's still hugely popular today on social media. Think about all the different prank videos that you see, hidden camera things that people shoot with their phone, millions of them every day. Candid Camera was the OG though. It traces its roots all the way back to 1947 and being on the radio. Alan Funt created a show called Candid Microphone and that was a Radio program, it was the same idea, captured unsuspecting people in humorous and sometimes absurd situations. It was simple yet revolutionary. Hidden microphones recording ordinary people's reactions to unusual scenarios orchestrated by the show's creators. I don't know if that show, that concept would work today, candid microphone, because people would naturally be suspicious that it was all staged. But back in the late 1940s, it was innovative. The comedy relied on spontaneity and authenticity, which distinguished Candid Microphone from other radio programs of the time. In 1948, Candid Camera made its debut on ABC, so it moved over to television. And this, adding the visual dimension, it enhanced the humor and entertainment and made it really authentic because you could see how people would react. Although I guess they could have been actors. For those that grew up with it, one of the most iconic aspects of Candid Camera was the tagline, smile, you're on Candid Camera.

Speaker 01:

When it's least expected, you're elected, you're the star. That's

Speaker 00:

every bit an important part of the show and it became an important part of pop culture. It was the signal of the reveal moment when the participants realized they'd been part of this prank. Because you think of prank, you hear the word prank, you think of things that can often be mean-spirited, because so many of them today are just cruel. But even then, back in the late 1940s, these were all pranks, unsuspecting people that weren't in on the joke, at least at first. Candid Camera was probably the first reality television show blending real-life scenarios, comedic elements... Much of the charm of Candid Camera was host Alan Funt's genial hosting style and the cleverness of the pranks, where people couldn't be too mad. Maybe at first they were shocked and a little embarrassed, but it wouldn't be like today where there'd be people throwing punches at the host. The format was really basic. Ordinary people placed in extraordinary situations, with hidden cameras recording their reactions, Like I said, confusion, surprise, maybe embarrassment, but then laughter and delight when Alan Funt would come out and appear and explain the prank. The original version of Candid Camera had a six-year run, so 1948 to 54. It was in syndication. In 1960, it came back for a seven-year run and was... almost exclusively in some sort of syndication from 1948 to 2014, in some form or fashion. It's hard to look at any reality television of today or of the last 30 years and not see the candid camera influence. I mean, it pioneered the hidden camera genre and paved the way for numerous imitators like Punk'd, Impractical Jokers, Just for Laughs gags. Literally the show bloopers and practical jokes right there. That's a lot of Candid Camera influence. But the reality TV idea of having your stars of the show be real people that aren't actors, that started at Candid Camera. So if you like reality TV, you can thank Candid Camera. If you hate it, you can blame them. In the 1990s, there was a notable revival of Candid Camera that was hosted by Alan Funt again, and then later his son Peter. Candid Camera was a labor of love because some of these pranks that they did, especially in the old days, they were logistical nightmares. It would take hours to set up these scenes just to get the few minutes that would be on the air. It's said that back in the 1950s that Approximately 50 sequences or pranks would be filmed for every four to five that made it on the air. So think about how many were just fails that they couldn't use. Because if you've got people that aren't actors, you can't really get the shot you want. It's basically a one-shot deal. And if it doesn't work, then we got to go on to the next one. They'd have to play tricks on these unsuspecting victims because... Cameras were hard to hide back then. They were a lot larger in the 1950s than now. So if you were walking down the street to be a part of this prank and there was a giant plant in a pot just somewhere that it shouldn't be, you'd be like, wait, what's that? A lot of the times the cameras would be behind screens and there'd be light. So it would look really suspicious and the people would say it was renovations in the building. Naturally, when you're Filming people's real reactions to things, it's not always suitable to be aired on television. There were lots of troubles with sensors and editing. And Alan Funt, the original host, he would get rid of things that were over the line or reach too deeply into people's private lives. And in the sense of not being able to control people's reactions, there's an infamous quote. unused take where there was a gag that was a men's room sign on a closet door in a swimming pool, and one man ignored the fact that it was actually a closet and still peed in there anyway. Naturally, in the 1950s and 60s, there weren't any really bad R-rated pranks. If you want to see hidden camera pranks gone wrong, there's plenty of video compilations you can find on YouTube with people throwing punches. Candid Camera was even an influence into my childhood. I'll share this story. My friend John and I in the early 1990s, back before caller ID was really anything, we would record our own radio shows, just funny things, skits and news and commercials and stuff that 15-year-old boys in the early 90s would do. Well, one thing we really wanted to do was something called Candid Phone. Which, if you grew up then, it's prank phone calls that we would record. These were innocent. Don't get it twisted. We didn't call people we didn't know and say we were coming over to kill them. It was mostly businesses, just being smart-ass kids. Although there was one where we called a friend, and I'm not going to name that friend. But the first time we called, I had the microphone in my hand and I'm supposed to hold it up to the earpiece so you can hear the person's responses. But instead, I held it to the mouthpiece of the phone. So when we played it back, there's just me talking and long periods of silence while our friend answered. I was supposed to be some salesman selling hair care products and it was a fail. But then in order to set things right with Candid Phone, my friend John called this friend back and did it right with the microphone up to his ear and claimed to have been called by the same hair care salesperson. Man, it was a different time back then. But circling this back around as we start to wrap up, Candid Camera holds a special place in the annals of television history. From the beginnings as Candid Microphone, to being that first reality television show, hidden camera show, it really was groundbreaking. And it continued. Its spiritual successors are everywhere. Do you remember Candid Camera? There were occasional specials in the 1980s. And then, as I said, it came back for a little while in the 90s. So maybe some of you that are around my age saw it a bit. Many of the pranks from back then in the late 40s, early 50s might seem tame compared to some of what's around today, but there's no denying the impact of Candid Camera and all the imitators it spawned and how it really created reality TV. But until next time, that's going to do it for episode 156 of the podcast. Thank you so much to all of you who listen, watch, who share the podcast, rate and review, who subscribe to my YouTube channel, who read my Initial Impressions 2.0 blog. I love the creativity, the content creation. I love all that stuff. So when I see that people are watching, listening, reading what I do, it really buoys my confidence. It boosts my mood. And I love doing the nostalgia-based podcasts And it seems like you all enjoy it as well. Because I started in January, the beginning of this year, with the transition over. And every month my numbers have gone up for downloads. Because who doesn't love nostalgia? Everything that's old is back in style. 80s and 90s. I've got so many more topics. Like I could do this podcast for another three years easy without any research. But I'm always finding new things I want to talk about. Find me all over social media. Subscribe on YouTube. Go and become a member on Patreon. You don't have to become a subscriber. I've got things on the free tier. Now that I've got this new camcorder, maybe I'll start doing more videos. Just saying hi over there for everyone. Coming up next week is episode 157. And I've got a special segment on the podcast. Restaurant Storytime Makes Its Return. Restaurant story time nine. I haven't figured out whatever the catchphrase to it will be. But I'm going to tell the story of when I was paid full time to sit at home for nine months. Well, I guess I just told the story, but it's way more than that. The reason I'm doing this segment of the podcast now is because the man who made that possible recently passed away. Jack Connors was an icon of Boston-based advertising and marketing and a giant of philanthropy for decades. He was the richest man I ever met, but he wasn't what you would consider a stereotypical rich man. He leaves a huge legacy behind and he's been eulogized. I mean, his funeral was live streamed on TV around here. You got to be something special to have your funeral be on television. But I owe Jack Connors a lot in my life. And it goes beyond nine months of being paid full time to sit at home. So next week on episode 157, it'll be Restaurant Storytime 9. And we'll go way in depth of the importance of Jack Connors to my restaurant career and life in general. If you're interested in any of my nine books, you can find them at my website, ChristopherSetterlin.com. It's got links to all those books. If you're interested in The Lady of the Dunes, Cape Cod's infamous murder case that just passed 50 years since it happened, visit theladyofthedunes.com. That includes my book, Searching for the Lady of the Dunes, which is based around Frank Durant's amazing documentary, The Lady of the Dunes. You may be hearing more from Frank in the future as we've got plans next month in September to meet up. So there may be a brand new interview with him, which I can't wait for. It's always fun to talk with him and then to have him on the show so you all can get to know him a little better. So I'm going to get ready to get up on out of here. The day I'm recording this, like I said at the beginning, it's a beautiful day. The humidity broke. It's a perfect day to be outside. Enjoy that vitamin D. I always say it at the end, recommend it that you get outside and enjoy it. And I'm one that I lead by example. Part of it is I think I'm lucky to live where I do on Cape Cod and be so close in proximity to so many beautiful places. Whether you're in the big city, suburbs, very rural areas with not much Wi-Fi, get out there and enjoy the beauty of the area where you are. And make sure to take this podcast with you. I'll keep pumping out the content. More and more nostalgia. And I thank you all for tuning in. I see my numbers. I've got more than 1,600 different cities and towns from the United States and over in the rest of the world that have listened to this show. And it's very humbling and I'm very grateful. Remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life because you never know what tomorrow brings. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, but you already knew that. I'll talk to you all again soon.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Christopher Setterlund

Host